


No Ordinary Bedfellows

by Prochytes



Category: No Ordinary Family
Genre: F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex-lives of the over-forties. With superpowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Ordinary Bedfellows

**Author's Note:**

> Small spoilers down to 1x07 “No Ordinary Mobster”. The story about Leonardo comes from the Life of the artist by Giorgio Vasari. Stephanie’s memory mangles a pop-cultural reference or two. Originally posted on LJ in 2011.

Stephanie Powell is thinking about her current level of ecstasy. This worries her. The worry does not (it should be clarified) concern Stephanie’s current level of ecstasy _per se_. That is certainly within acceptable parameters. No – Stephanie is worried because she is _thinking_ about her current level of ecstasy. And, frankly, applying to it (albeit in the privacy of her own cranium) a notion like “acceptable parameters” .

 

Stephanie would solicit Jim’s opinion on all this, but Jim’s tongue is gainfully employed right now, and please God yes don’t stop that yes.

 

If Jim _were_ called upon to express an opinion here, Stephanie suspects that he would twit her with bringing her science back to the boudoir. Not everything can be measured, Steph. Sometimes you’ve just got to feel. (Stephanie twists her hand into the pillow; she really does not want to risk thumping on the wall.)

 

But Stephanie thinks that this hypothetical rebuke of Jim’s misses the point. Quite apart from its classic Arts Major move to monopolize the fuzzies, she knows that the basic reasoning is wrong. Stephanie would not have been reacting like this fifteen years ago, when she was no less a scientist than she is now. Is this detachment, then, a sign of age?

 

Neither of them is getting any younger. Recent developments have proffered the illusion of youth restored. When it comes to running and jumping and lifting, there is not an eighteen-year-old on Earth to match them. But Jim still has his love-handles – they provide a useful purchase for his wife’s toes. Stephanie still has her crows’ feet, even if the speed has burnt through her cellulite like a forest fire. 

 

Physical age is not the whole story, though. (Stephanie restrains herself, with an effort, from raking her fingers across Jim’s upper back. A much-loved mainstay of their erotic routine, regretfully abandoned after the plane-crash, when Stephanie broke two nails doing it because Jim’s skin had started bouncing bullets.) Their minds, like their bodies, are feeling the wear and tear. Stephanie and Jim have responsibilities.

 

And also a pair of teenaged children. Daphne and JJ are not exactly at home with the idea that their parents might, occasionally, have sex, despite the compelling circumstantial evidence that at least two prior convictions need to be taken into consideration. Daphne would die of mortification at the idea of her mother achieving climax. This is why Stephanie is so careful to keep her current... responses muffled from her daughter.

 

Her newly psychic daughter. Stephanie sits bolt upright in bed. How the Hell do you keep an orgasm quiet from a _telepath_?

 

Stephanie spends a steep few seconds pounding through possible options in her head, trying to remember a psi-nullification discussion she had a few days previously with Katie. (Katie’s suggestions included the wearing of a profoundly silly-looking helmet and the presence of a man from Haiti. Presumably  this made some sort of sense on Planet Katie.) Only then does she calm herself enough to look down at her waist once more, whence Jim is eyeing her with a warily sheepish expression.

 

Stephanie knows that look. It is the one Jim assumes when he thinks he has done something to upset her, like leaving his work clothes on the floor, or turning up late for a dinner party, or embarking on a career as a balaclava-wearing vigilante. Stephanie never intends to reveal how cute she finds it, since that would constitute an unacceptable shift in the balance of conjugal power. Right now, though, its cause is clear. Jim thinks that he almost brought her off too quickly.

 

Stephanie smiles down at him, and strokes his head, as they settle back into an easier rhythm. She is probably over-reacting about Daphne. And, let’s face it, the selective blindness is not all on one side. JJ almost certainly masturbates, for example, but Stephanie has no urgent desire to ponder that. For all she knows, he might be doing it right now, thinking about... who, exactly? Probably someone older than him. Someone friendly, but out-of reach. Someone with a pretty smile, and a brain that can almost duke it out with his, and a disturbingly comprehensive knowledge of pre-revival _Doctor Who_.

 

Dear God, JJ probably thinks of Katie when he masturbates. My son jerks off picturing my research assistant. And my daughter, right now,  is probably listening to me worrying about her brother jerking off as he thinks about my research assistant.

 

This is enough of a mood-killer to communicate itself, albeit cryptically, to Jim. He harrumphs for a bit, and then reacts by advancing their usual schedule. Stephanie raises no objection. As he scoots up the bed, her legs wrap around his waist.

 

After the consequences of the crash had emerged, Jim and Stephanie re-approached penetrative sex with a certain diffidence. In retrospect, Stephanie regrets following that link Katie blushingly sent her early on to something called “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”. This gave Stephanie nightmares for a week. Not that she was the only one at risk, of course. The joke that did the rounds of campus while Stephanie was a graduate (“What do you do if your boyfriend’s smoking? Stop moving so fast.”) loses much of its hilarity when you live within spitting distance of the sound barrier.

 

But in bed, at least, Jim can curb his strength as easily as his wife can moderate her speed. The clever hands roam across her body. Stephanie knows that she should find that obvious paradox – the behemoth’s power behind the artist’s grace – rather cheesy. It turns up enough in Katie’s cultural references: Leonardo da Vinci, who could bend a horseshoe in his grasp; someone from her beloved comics with a ridiculous codename like “Colossal”. Thank God George never convinced Jim that he needed one of those.

 

It should definitely strike her as cheesy. But one advantage of age, it occurs to Stephanie, is that cheesiness ceases to matter. You’re never going to be cool again once you hit forty. The best you can really hope for is _chambré_.

 

It is the passion of youth that burns or freezes. Mr and Mrs Powell will never know those extremes again. That thought saddens Stephanie a little. But there is much to be said, Stephanie decides (as she builds, with her husband, to the slightly bothered orgasm of the over-forties), for the temperate zone – for compromise, and preoccupation, and tenderness. Yes, there is.

 

FINIS

 


End file.
